REBar Camp Report

First of all, I have to say WOW what a great conference to be at! The fact that the entire thing was free was awesome in the first place, plus you didn't have a bunch of sales pitches about products. But the best part of the whole thing was the attendance of so many agents who are all eager to increase their online presence. Unfortunately I was only able to attend the last few sessions of the camp, but the information disseminated was excellent. I also feel like I missed a HUGE marketing opportunity for EZ Posting! There were so many agents there that could have used my service and I had such an opportunity to make more contacts, I am honestly a little disappointed. But, we learn from our mistakes and move on to the next thing.

I did have the chance to meet a few new agents as well as match some faces to the names that I read about in the Phoenix real estate blogosphere; so that alone constitutes a success for me.

I appreciated the classes and learned a bit about the Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the rest of those Web 2.0 things. But, I have to say that I still disagree that these venues are productive BUSINESS applications. I have no doubt that they are wonderful ways to update people on you life and perhaps even meet some mutual acquaintances via the web. These are all things that are good. But I can't imagine myself sitting down and tweeting to find new clients or making friends on Myspace to significantly improve my online presence. If you listened close enough to the speakers at the conference who spoke about these social networking sites, you could pick up on the fact that these sites are a way of life for them. They expressed it in no uncertain terms; "we love twittering and facebook because they are fun and useful sites, not because we try to draw a lot of business from them". Which is great! I don't think that you should really try to use those sites to spam people and make a million useless friends. Use those sites to update people about your life and what you are up to, not to make some huge marketing campaign.

So my advice to real estate agents (and any professional in general) is as follows: Use social media as something that YOU like to do. Don't waste your time trying to figure out how to make the greatest tweet or make the best Facebook page to get a dozen new clients; just make sure that you are being the best realtor that you can be and people will come to you.

Attending the REBar Camp!

I am excited to be attending the REBar camp coming up this Thursday at Scottsdale Stadium. It will be the first true real estate networking and marketing conference I have ever attended and I am quite excited to be a part of it. Unfortunately, due to my schedule I will only be able to make the second half of the sessions, but I am looking forward to the event tremendously. I hope that the sharing of information will be excellent and that I can glean a lot of good techniques from other real estate professionals.

What is REBar camp? Well, this great post from Jonathan Dalton is where I actually learned about the event (thank you Jonathan!) and he describes the camp as a conference that will be discussing the various sides of social media marketing and how it plays into real estate marketing. The thing that I am most impressed by is the fact that the entire conference is FREE! I checked the sign up sheet a day ago and there were about 350 people attending the conference, so I am looking forward to meeting a lot of new people and hopefully making some good contacts!

I will update my blog after attending to give my assesment and report back some of the information that I learn.

Is Craigslist a good place to search for homes?

This is a great blog article from Jay Thompson on the different sites on the internet that you can search for homes locally. It talks about the differences between Zillow, Realtor, Trulia, MLS, etc. and which ones are the best and for what reasons. Jay neglects to mention Craigslist in his list of search engines and that is understandable because Craigslist is such a large database and is not designed specifically for home searching. I sent the author an email to see why he chose not to include such a popular site in his list. His response was that Craigslist is poorly designed for searching for homes and the total number of homes on the site is a small percentage of what is truly available on the market. However, he also said that he does post to such sites in order to get the highest amount of views out there for his clients, which is a good thing. While his analysis has some valid points, I think there are a few points that he might not have taken into consideration:

1. Craigslist is a starting point for buyers: Craigslist is very close to achieving standardization for classifieds search sites. If you want to understand standardiztion just think Google; do you use any of the other ten million search engines out there, or just Google? Google has become the industry standard. Why is the standardization of Craigslist important to real estate agents? Because its where buyers START THE PROCESS. So many home buyers begin their search on the site they know best, and that's Craigslist. They go to check out whats in their area, see an ad they like, call the agent, and boom, you've got a lead.
   
2. Craigslist is built for browsing: People sit and look for crap on Craigslist all day long. That's why there are 1000 ads a day posted to the Phoenix Real Estate site. There are a ton of hooks in the ocean, but there is also a lot of fish swimming around. I will give you this, there are way too many Residential-real-estate-for-sale ads on CL; so much that it is rare to get a single solid lead after a few weeks of TOP Posting. However, there is NO BETTER PLACE for marketing rental properites or Lease-Purchase Options on the Web. If you post a house or apartment for rent or especially an LPO on Craigslist, you will get calls.
   
3. Craigslist gets your name out there: If you search for a certain property type long enough, you start to see the same people posting the same types of properties. For example, one of our clients Jim uses EZ Posting to list properties in the commercial real estate section. Because his name is out there more and more, people who are searching for commercial real estate see Jim's name pop up a lot. Even if he doesn't have the exact property they want, people know that Jim handles a lot of Scottsdale commercial leasing and they are more apt to call him because they see his inventory on the Web.
   

So is Craigslist the answer to your marketing woes? Nope. But it can go a long ways in improving your online presence. Its true that CL isn't the greatest site for searching for homes, but its a place where a LOT of buyers begin the process. They see a property they like, give the agent a call, and all the sudden you have a solid lead, which we all know is a great thing to have.

Does posting ads on other Craigslist cities work?

I'm sure you have seen something like it before on Craigslist; You're browsing your Phoenix Craigslist site and you see "Beautiful 3 Bedroom in foreclosure!" You click on the ad, only to find that the house is in Prescott and you don't even know where Prescott is. So was that a big waste of your time? Probably, if you aren't looking for a house in Prescott. But what if you were? and what if you had the money, and you like what you saw, and you wanted to get more info? You call the agent, go see the house, love it, and buy it. I guess posting that ad in another city worked out for that agent huh? The fact is that posting ads in multiple cities CAN work for you, depending on what you are trying to sell.
First off, let's be clear. Craigslist does NOT like you posting ads in multiple cities. It's against their suggested guidelines and maybe the TOU (Terms of Use) and if they find you doing it, they can shut down your account. What's more, some users don't like it and they will flag you for doing it. So what? you think to yourself. I can get flagged as much as I want and nothing happens right? i just have to post it again. Wrong... If you get flagged more than 8 times (approx) , your get your account placed on hold. Is that a big deal? Not really because you just get another gmail account, register a new Craigslist account, and go from there. Is it a pain in the neck? Absolutely. Additionally, there are some rumors floating around the web that if you get too many accounts placed on hold, Craigslist will block your IP address, which means that you don't get to use CL again, at least not from that computer.
But back to the original question, does it work? By work, if you mean driving more people to your website, then yeah, it does. It works especially well if you are trying to promote little items like jewelry and get people to click on your website. Does posting real estate in non-local areas (i mean posting in a different state for non-local) work and drive people to your site? Maybe, but let's be realistic. Do you really want users in Portland clicking on your site when they are never going to move to Arizona? Probably not. Keep focused on your local markets and you will be much better off!

A Turn in Phoenix Real Estate?

In the Phoenix real estate market, we have seen a bit of a turn. Or have we? This great blog post from Steve Belt details the story of how a buying frenzy in the last month or so has been located primarily in properties priced below $200,000. If you want more quantifiable data on current market conditions, I highly recommend Mr. Belt's blog. And no, Mr. Belt and I don't know each other personally so I'm not trying to promo his site; I just think that good info should be shared.

So what does this have to do with EZ Posting? Well, by our guesstimations, about 50% of all the Residential Real Estate ads on the Phoenix Craigslist site are priced at or below the $200,000 mark. That means that a TON of potential buyers for this kind of real estate are looking on Craigslist for their next home. If you have any properties around this price level, you MUST be advertising them on Craigslist! If you aren't, buyers are virtually passing over your potential sales in the blink of an eye. And with nearly 1000 ads being posted to the Phoenix Craigslist site alone, you MUST stay on top of those listings! Naturally, that's where we at EZ Posting come in to help you! We'll keep your listings up near the top, and give you a great looking ad while doing it!